Analysing China's English‐language media

This paper is a sociolinguistic view of China's English language media and its attempted penetration of the global language community. Using Kachru's Caliban dynamic as a metaphor, I examine how China attempts to send an ideologically loaded, Sinocentric English back to the ‘colonisers’. The careful construction of language (linguistic engineering) for political purposes is discussed in its various forms of officialese and fixed formulations as peculiar to the Chinese political tradition. The paper concludes by suggesting that due to its limited interest to global society in general, and other reasons, the language of China's politicised English outreach (i.e. Zhonglish, Xinhua English, New China Newspeak) will continue to retain only a marginal global media presence until ideological divides can be bridged.